


slowly learning that life is okay

by daidydud



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Farmhouse, Fluff and Angst, but it turned into ellie angst somewhat, idk what else to tag this as, is this cottagecore?, mention of joel being best father figure, originally dina/ellie fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24994054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daidydud/pseuds/daidydud
Summary: Ellie's awake one night at the farmhouse with Dina. She's left with her own thoughts, and copes somewhat.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 58





	slowly learning that life is okay

**Author's Note:**

> idk if it really matters, but fyi this takes place before JJ is born. they like...just moved in to the farmhouse.
> 
> title is from Take Me On by a-ha, but i wrote this while listening to ellie's version

Ellie stayed as still as she could in the bed while Dina shifted in her sleep. The latter turned onto her side, now facing Ellie. Even after all they’d done together, all the swift good luck kisses and spontaneous makeout sessions, Ellie still got butterflies just looking at Dina. _Fuck, I thought this shit would stop when we kissed._ Ellie internally grumbled.  


Her eyes slowly studied Dina’s face for what had to be the millionth time since she turned over. Focusing on something else entirely helped with the nightmares.

(most of the time. sometimes, the best remedy was dina’s reassuring embrace, but ellie wouldn’t dare wake up dina for that.)

The freckles that dusted her cheeks and the tip of her nose made Ellie’s heart flutter. She pretended that she could make constellations out of them, and was suddenly hit by a bitter memory of laying in the Apollo 11 model with Joel. She scrunched her face up in distress, and took a breath, trying to focus on Dina again.  


Her lips were chapped, much like Ellie’s, but they looked much softer than Ellie’s ever had. Maybe it was because of how much she loved her, forming some sort of weird bias. As Dina took a deep breath, a piece of her hair swooped down in front of her face. Ellie, without thinking, took her hand and tucked it behind Dina’s ear. After finishing the impulsive motion, Ellie realized she might’ve woken Dina.  


She saw Dina shift again, and cursed under her breath. However, Dina rolled onto her back, letting out a soft snore. Ellie sighed, her body relaxing. If only the world wasn’t so royally fucked, she could’ve had a better life with her. One with normal things, like two story suburban homes with white picket fences, just like in those old photos she saw occasionally. The neighborhoods, before they’d been ransacked and destroyed by infected, had to have been nice at one point in time.  


Her heart ached, yearning for a different timeline. She turned onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. Her hand itched to draw something, and she sighed, slowly getting up. Grabbing her journal and a pencil, then sitting back down, she sat up a bit. Ellie flipped through the pages slowly, taking the time to look back on her previous drawings in the moonlight.  


At the beginning, there were drawings of random plants and things that she and Joel found together.

(there were also small doodles and sketches of joel himself, but those hurt too much to acknowledge.)

As time passed, and Ellie drew more and more, her pages were filled with Dina herself. Her smile, when her face would scrunch up out of sheer concentration, her laugh. Ellie had done her best to capture what she could, in the least creepy way possible. After Joel’s death, there were more pictures of gnarled infected, clickers and runners alike. A dead rabbit she’d caught while hunting.  


The sheer grimness of her drawings had toned down a bit in Seattle, but it was still darker. Depictions of graffiti she’d seen around, sketches of crumbled buildings. Every now and then, a sketch of _Abby’s_ head would appear, the face scribbled out aggressively. After the encounter, and Jesse’s death, she’d stopped drawing in the journal, taking to drawing and painting in the art room in the farmhouse.  


Flipping to a blank page at last, she hesitated. It was time to start a new section of her life. One maybe not as plagued with hatred and vengeance. Slowly, her pencil began scratching against the rough paper, and she felt more at home than ever before.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading ahaha, still figuring out this platform :)


End file.
